Harry Potter 1. Stepping Out

There had been a lull in Order of the Phoenix business and Mr. Weasley had a work holiday, so the crowd from 12 Grimmauld Place decided to have a little adventure, with Mr. Weasley, Hermione, and Harry serving as tour guides.  
In the morning over breakfast, Mr. Weasley seemed the most excited.  
"A whole day passing as Muggles, doing what they do in their world!" he kept tittering excitedly.  
"What exactly do you have in mind, Arthur?" asked Lupin, picking up his toast.  
"Well, first I was thinking we'd go to a magic show..."  
"A what?" growled Moody.  
"A magic show," interrupted Hermione, "Is a show that Muggles put on to show off their ability to trick people into thinking they see what they don't."  
"There's no real magic involved," Mr. Weasley added.  
"Then what's the fun?" Moody returned, prodding his magical eye with his wand as it floated in a glass of water.  
"It'll be an experience," said Mr. Weasley. "The Muggles have nothing closer to real magic."  
"What after the show?" asked Harry.  
"I was thinking of going to an interesting sort of place unique to the Muggle lifestyle-a swimming pool," he said dramatically.  
"Oh, that'll be fun," Hermione agreed, "I haven't been swimming since last summer. But do we all have bathing suits?"  
"I have a bathing suit," admitted Mad-Eye.  
"What?" asked Sirius, who, up until this point had been brooding over not getting to go out at all.  
"It's called taking off your robes and hopping in the tub," Moody continued.  
"No!" screamed Hermione more vehemently than she had perhaps intended. "A bathing suit is a special thing you wear when you go swimming. Men wear shorts, which are like Muggle trousers with most of the leg parts cut off."  
"Ah," growled Moody, "I don't have that."  
Hermione was frustrated that, as an underage witch, she couldn't just conjure them all appropriate swimwear right there. She spent about twenty minutes trying to clarify the strange notions Mr. Weasley had in his mind (a wetsuit, a monokini), so he could do the job for her. By nine o'clock, though, everyone who was going had a suit and towel in a bag slung over his or her shoulder. Everyone's clothing looked passably Muggle-ish, and so they set off. They took the floo network to Diagon Alley, and then stepped into Muggle London from there. 


	2. The Magic Show

There were nine of them in all-Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny, Lupin, Moody, Tonks, and Mrs. Weasley, all led by a very excited Mr. Weasley, who seemed perhaps too confident that he could navigate the Muggle world for a day.  
"Okay, everyone, wands away," he ordered, sounding very much like a teacher, "We're doing this right. No magic whatsoever until five o'clock this afternoon."  
Moody pulled his hat further down over his electric blue eye. "Gotcha," he growled.  
There was a street fair happening only a few blocks away. As they entered it, a teenage boy's shouts caught their attention.  
"See the great master of magic at work! Harold Bongini, magician extraordinaire begins in just five minutes, in this tent! It's a great show, and at just a pound each, kids free, why not bring the whole family?"  
"This is what I had planned," said Mr. Weasley.  
Hermione was in charge of the stack of bills Mr. Weasley had managed to scrounge from the Department of Muggle Artifacts. She handed the teenage boy a small piece of paper marked "10," and was given one back with a "1" on it. The nine of them piled into the tent. Moody, Lupin, and the Weasley parents managed to get seats in the back, but the rest of them, including Tonks, were forced to sit up front with the little kids.  
"Aren't Muggle children cute?" she cooed, as a little girl with a lollypop sneezed a massive trail of snot down her shirt.  
"Really cute," answered Ron.  
The magic show was a hit, especially with Mr. Weasley.  
"Fascinating!" he kept calling from the back. "It really looks like that ferret came out of your shoe!"  
The magician juggled, pulled handkerchiefs out of people's ears, and "transfigured" a plate of cookies into a dove. All was going well until he uttered the magic words.  
"Abracadabra," he announced with a swish of the black plastic stick he called a wand.  
"Aarrgh!" boomed Moody, who leapt to his feet (not an easy task for him), and began to lurch toward the front. "HOW DARE YOU THREATEN ME, WITH ALL THESE CHILDREN AROUND? IF YOU WANT TO KILL ME, DARK WIZARD, DO IT IN A SAFER PLACE, BY MERLIN'S PARTS!"  
Lupin was now also on his feet. He grabbed the collar of Moody's cloak and began to drag him backwards out of the tent.  
"Sorry!" he shouted. "My father's a bit paranoid, easily frightened."  
But Lupin was also shaking after the close shave with the incantation that had sounded suspiciously like a Muggle perversion of the killing curse. Mrs. Weasley was near hysterics as they attempted to recover outside.  
"No magic!" she was hurling at her husband. "Someone could have gotten killed in there! You heard what that man said!"  
"He said, 'abracadabra,'" said a small voice.  
"Hermione!"  
"It's not the same thing," Harry added.  
"And he's a Muggle," wheedled Mr. Weasley.  
Mad-Eye Moody was trudging about, the hand that wasn't holding his walking staff still hovering very close to the pocket that contained his wand.  
"Look, you've upset Alastor. He doesn't need this kind of stress after all he's been through."  
"I'm fine," he growled, waving Molly off. "What's for lunch?" 


	3. Mayhem on the Underground

After much arguing, they settled on an Indian fusion café that Hermione insisted would be a wonderful cross-cultural experience in more than one way.  
"My parents love Indian food," she was saying, "We eat it all the time at home. It doesn't have to be spicy if you ask them to make it mild."  
Many people in the group seemed disappointed that they didn't actually get to see the food being prepared.  
"I'd love to see Muggle food prep techniques," said Mr. Weasley dreamily.  
"The chef is chopping up chicken with a knife, and putting the pieces into a bowl of marinade," said Moody, gazing through his hat and the wall separating the dining room from the kitchen.  
"I envy your eye sometimes, Mad-Eye. Where did you get that thing, anyway?" asked Tonks.  
"Won it in a duel. I was trying to return a defective package of colaburps to a shop in Knockturn Alley, and the owner took my displeasure in his product personally. A nearby chap noticed our row and offered the eye to me if I would fight the shop owner to settle the disagreement. I accepted, the owner and I dueled, and I won. I got the eye, and the stranger got the satisfaction of seeing the shop owner hang his head in shame. I think there was bad blood between them but he didn't have the courage to fight personally. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with the eye, though, since I didn't have a need for it until several years later, when my own eye got slurped out by a hose-nosed vampire aardvark."  
"Ew! I asked how you got your magical eye, not how you lost your original one! Ew." Tonks seemed to have lost her appetite just as their food arrived.  
  
After lunch, they got on the underground. It was very crowded, and Harry found himself squished between two Muggles who reminded him greatly of the Dursleys. Lupin was clinging to a pole for dear life, his frail figure looking as if it could be knocked down with the next lurch of the train.  
They hurtled along in the dark tunnel, the train grinding along on its tracks. Ginny looked a bit sick.  
Thunk! Something went wrong with the train. It thudded to a stop and the lights went out. The people in their car were thrown to the floor all over each other in a massive heap.  
"Arthur! Is this supposed to happen?"  
"I don't think so."  
"You're on my leg."  
"I can't see a thing."  
"Help!!!"  
"Ew, what's this stuff on the floor?"  
"Help! We're trapped! Get off! We need to get out!"  
"I don't think we're in mortal danger, dude."  
"OUCH! What are you doing to my FINGER?"  
"Sorry, Tonks, I thought that was my spare bite-a-light."  
"If I start turning into werewolf next full moon, I'll know who to call."  
"I don't think it works that way."  
"What's going on?"  
"I sure hope my wand's not broken."  
A bright blaze filled the cabin. Lupin had found what he had been looking for. He took a small bead-like thing out of his mouth and held it up to illuminate the room better.  
"Is everyone all right?" he called to the frazzled crowd.  
"Remus, that's wizard technology. Put it away," Mr. Weasley hissed at him.  
But none of the Muggles seemed particularly shocked at seeing a small, light-producing object, so he kept it in his raised hand.  
"It only gives two minutes of light. I just wanted to make sure everyone's all right."  
"I could have told you that," said Moody, still planted in the seat a Muggle had yielded to him as they boarded the train. He tipped his hat in reference to his magical eye.  
With a lurch, the train started again, and the lights came on just as Lupin's went out. Shaken, the riders stood up again.  
They exited the underground, quite happy to be rid of the train. The swimming pool was in a more residential district, and they had to be careful not to attract attention to themselves. A large, haphazard group like themselves could never be too careful.  
  
*** Author's Note: Bite-a-light technology originally appears in Salman Rushdie's book "Haroun and the Sea of Stories." I just thought it would be a fun little thing to throw in here. 


	4. The Swimming Pool

At the pool, Hermione fretted about the price of admission. It was more expensive than Mr. Weasley had estimated.  
"Oh, drat," she muttered. "It's £2.50 each, and at that rate we won't have quite enough to get back on the underground."  
"I'm not swimming," said Moody.  
"No, no, we'll figure something out," she answered.  
"No, forget it," he maintained. "The sight of me in a bathing suit would be enough to make anyone require memory modification."  
"If you say so," replied Hermione, but they all knew she was just being polite. Moody was probably right. No one was sure what horrible disfigurements he kept beneath his robes as tokens of a long career as an auror, and they didn't really want to know. They paid for eight.  
Harry had a time on the men's side explaining what sunscreen was for.  
"It's so goopy, though," complained Mr. Weasley. "Maybe I'll just put on a UV blocking charm."  
"You were the one who wanted to do things the Muggle way," replied Harry as he greased himself up. "This is part of that."  
Meanwhile, on the women's side, Hermione was laboriously trying to convince Tonks, Mrs. Weasley, and Ginny that they had to shower before entering the pool ("I thought it was the swimming that was supposed to clean you..."). She explained the workings of the pool's water purification system as best she could, and finally managed to drag them all into the shower. They emerged from the locker room dripping wet as Harry, Moody, Ron, and pair of abominable snowmen arrived from the other side.  
"Arthur! What in Merlin's name?"  
"Er, they insisted on taking sunscreen to the max," explained Harry, gesturing in an 'I don't want to know them' way toward Lupin and Mr. Weasley, who had absolutely covered themselves from head to toe with sun block. There wasn't an inch of bare skin that didn't look like it had been blanketed in shaving cream.  
One of the lifeguards had sauntered over to them.  
"N-no," he said simply, at a loss for more words. He indicated that the two of them needed to shower off immediately and would by no means be allowed into the pool until they did.  
Moody sat himself down in a lawn chair near a set of bleachers, and immediately some young children began to inspect him fearfully. He was easy to spot, even in a crowd of wizards, and he could never really pass for a Muggle. He just sat there in the shade, drinking from his hip flask and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.  
The kids were already in the water by the time Lupin and Mr. Weasley emerged again, severely cleaned off. Harry swam over to where Lupin had seated himself on the pool edge. The ex-professor was wearing turquoise bathing trunks with little yellow palm trees on them. Mrs. Weasley made a sound of concerned disapproval as she walked past and noticed an odd curve in Lupin's spine that shouldn't have been there, a result of the extreme stress his body endured each month.  
"What?" demanded Lupin, looking around at her.  
"Nothing, Remus."  
"Are you going to get in?" Harry asked.  
"I don't know," he replied. "To tell you the truth, I don't know how to swim. My parents tried to sign me up for a class once but the instructor wouldn't accept a werewolf child."  
With a look of shock that made him immediately ashamed, Harry's eyes fell on a pair of markings on Lupin's leg that looked suspiciously like bite marks.  
"You're not the only one with strange old scars, Harry," Lupin remarked. It had simply never crossed Harry's mind that a werewolf bite left a permanent mark other than the curse of the monthly transformation.  
"Old Moony Mansfield. He escaped one full moon from the cell he had built for himself. Never forgave himself for what he did-I met him a few years after he bit me. Came to the meeting with Dumbledore to discuss my admission to Hogwarts. Nice old chap. Worked as a test subject when they were developing Wolfsbane a decade or so after that."  
"You don't blame him for what he... did to you?"  
"Before Wolfsbane, none of us had control of our actions the night of a full moon." Harry decided to leave it at that.  
"So, do you want to go swimming, Professor Lupin?"  
"I... I don't know. What do I have to do?"  
Over on the bleachers, Moody had given up trying to conceal himself and was now delighting in frightening children with his mad eye. When Mrs. Weasley came dripping up to him to advise him to cut it out, that he was interfering with Muggle affairs, he laughed her off and told her they needed a little mental stimulation in the occult, lest they "turn into little Petunias and Vernons."  
It had taken both Harry and Hermiones' coaxing to get Lupin into the water. He was now dog paddling tentatively around the shallow end. Ron was bellyflopping off of the diving board along with Ginny, and Mr. Weasley was blowing bubbles and marveling at the fact that there could be lights under the water. Tonks was swimming laps in the deep end, her hair tactfully short. Mrs. Weasley was still haranguing Moody.  
Two children approached where Lupin, Harry, and Hermione were hanging out.  
"I'm a fairy," said the girl, batting her eyelashes.  
"I'm a tyrannosaurus rex!" roared her younger brother.  
"Really?" answered Lupin incredulously. "I'm a werewolf."  
"Naw you're not," countered the girl.  
"Am too!" Lupin lunged toward her and started growling. Harry couldn't stop laughing. Hermione looked at Harry critically, as if to ask whether it was nice to laugh at Lupin's disability, but soon succumbed to giggles herself. Silently, the lifeguard gazed over at them to make sure no one was actually drowning anybody. 


	5. Moody's War Story, End

On the underground back home, Harry eavesdropped on Mad-Eye Moody, who was chatting to Mr. Weasley and relating his World War II stories.  
"One of the first things Churchill did when he became prime minister was get in contact with Minister of Magic Gladduck Roach and ask for wizard assistance with the war. (Aside from all the obvious reasons, Neville Chamberlain got the axe because he was staunchly against getting magical folk involved.) But the war was going badly enough at that point that even some of the more conservative men in the government were behind acquiring any help they could.  
"So, the Royal Wizard Air Force was formed. I signed up right out of Hogwarts because they promised to pay for my auror training. Probably would have done it anyway. I got placed in the Third Forward Guard. We'd get up every morning, grab our brooms (Nimbus 1940 and 41s), and fly across the channel to patrol the France-Belgium border."  
"The Muggles didn't see you, did they?" asked Mr. Weasley.  
"Oh, sometimes, though we were usually Disillusioned. The Muggle superiors always managed to convince the few that did spot us that they were shell shocked and didn't know what they had seen, or that we were riding classified technology."  
"Why couldn't you have just flown into Germany and crushed them all to bits?" interrupted Ginny, who was sitting next to her father.  
"Think, girl!" growled Moody. "There are wizards in Germany, too! Berlin had an army of 150 aurors surrounding it, and there were about 4000 more dispersed throughout Germany and other Nazi territories. Not to mention the fact that Grindelwald was roaming around Europe back then! If you ask me, I have a very good idea who in the German Wizard government was good mates with Hitler."  
"Who?" asked Mr. Weasley.  
"Matthaus Metzger."  
"That sounds vaguely familiar. He was the Non-Magical Allegiances Director, or whatever they call it in Germany, right?"  
"Yep. Had family in England helping him, too, though they'd changed their name to Malfoy after the first war."  
Somehow, Harry was not at all surprised.  
"You're being paranoid again, Alastor."  
"No, that's a verified fact. They Malfoys were spies. Naturally, they've since apologized and paid generous reparations." Moody flicked the remains of his nose deviously. "Constant vigilance!"  
"What was it like out there, flying?" Ginny interrupted again.  
"Cold. We had to hover above airplane level when we were on patrol. I only saw a little bit of action. On my first big skirmish with an Axis flying carpet squadron I was knocked off my broom and plunged several thousand feet. I managed to slow my fall midair with a parachute charm, but I broke my leg in three places when I hit ground. Damn POW camp mediwizards never put it back together properly. I think they did it out of spite. Hurt like Merlin's warts for years. It was almost a relief when that wiffling fangroller took it off a few decades later."  
Harry heard Ginny suppress an "eeugh!"  
  
Later, back at 12 Grimmauld Place, Mrs. Weasley made lemon tea for them all as they sat around the kitchen table. Moody had taken his cup and stomped off to harass Mundungus for moving two dozen illegal pink cabbages into the house while they were gone, and Sirius for not stopping him. Tonks was entertaining Ginny and Herminone with her transforming noses again, and Lupin was relating the day's events to Sirius, who had since slipped down into the kitchen to avoid Moody. Something in the tea had made Harry very sleepy. He and Ron crept upstairs, brushed their teeth, and climbed into bed. The room was dark and they were going to sleep, when suddenly there was a loud CRACK and Ron screamed.  
"STOP APPARATING ON ME!"  
"Sorry mates. How was the Order's day out?"  
Fred and George gazed expectantly down at them in the darkness.  
  
*** The End *** Ha ha! A complete story! Aren't you grateful? I know you are, so please review. 


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Harry Potter, Humor